Most
Americans, when asked for a photo ID, will pull out a driver's
license and not think twice about it. We have to show proof of our
identity when we drink, when we drive, and when we fly.
Identification can also be required to rent a movie, borrow a book,
or write a check. So why shouldn't we be required to show a photo
ID to vote? That's the question presently before the U.S. Supreme
Court.

More
than 20 states, including Indiana, currently have voter-ID laws in
place requiring that citizens show some form of valid,
government-issued ID such as a driver's license or passport in
order to vote. However, with a presidential election on the horizon,
these laws have become the center of heated debate.

The
debate is largely divided along partisan lines. (Republicans tend to
favor ID laws, while Democrats generally oppose them.) It pits
protecting the integrity of the voting process from voter fraud
against making sure as many eligible voters as possible take part in
the process. Yet critics argue that these laws do little to protect
against fraud and actually prevent legitimate voters from exercising
their right to vote.

According
to a 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School
of Law, photo-ID laws are effective only in preventing individuals
from impersonating other voters at the polls - an occurrence "more
rare than death by lightning." Furthermore, as the Brennan Center's
report The Truth About Voter
Fraud
(http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/TruthAboutVoterFraud.pdf) points
out, there is a great deal of misunderstanding related to what
constitutes actual voter fraud.

Too
often, other forms of election misconduct or irregularities are
improperly labeled as voter fraud when, in fact, they are due to
technological glitches, mistakes by election officials or voters,
misconduct by individuals other than individual voters, and a host of
other problems that voter-ID laws fail to address. Moreover, what
little voter fraud does occur generally takes place through absentee
ballots, rather than in-person voters.

While
voter-ID laws seem to have little effect on preventing election
misconduct, they do pose a threat of disenfranchisement to millions
of Americans lacking valid IDs. As Robert Brandon, president of the
Fair Elections Legal Network, points out, "Millions of eligible,
registered voters lack identification - they do not drive, fly, or
routinely enter office towers, although they do vote and have done so
most of their adult lives. Many of them - poor, elderly, disabled,
and student voters - lack the stringent government-issued photo
identification required by Indiana and four other states."

According
to Brandon, 18 percent of voters over 65 and more than 3 million
disabled people lack government IDs. "African Americans obtain
driver's licenses at half the rate of whites. Many rural elderly
were born at home and have no birth certificates. The costs of
getting a government ID can be prohibitive: up to $45 for a driver's
license, $97 for a passport, and more than $200 for documents proving
citizenship."

What's
more, writes Mark Sherman of the Associated Press, "Homeless people
wanting to vote might face the most difficulty under the law. While
the state will provide a voter ID card free of charge to the poor,
applicants still must have a birth certificate or other documentation
to get the ID card." Carter Wolf, executive director of Horizon
House, which provides services to the homeless, adds that it can cost
up to $70 just to get a birth certificate.

Any
law that denies American citizens unfettered access to the voting
booth should be viewed with great skepticism. Unlike driving, flying,
or even writing a check, voting is a fundamental constitutional
right, one that should have few barriers in its way. And while on
their face voter-ID laws may seem relatively benign, they are a
menace to freedom and bring to mind the poll taxes and literacy tests
that were used to keep African Americans away from the voting booths
prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Voter-ID
laws also take us one step closer to a "show your papers"
society. In this regard, they are part of a far-reaching agenda to
ensure the adoption of a de facto
national identification card, which has repeatedly met with
opposition - and for good reasons.

The
idea of requiring citizens to carry a national ID card is not new.
Many current authoritarian regimes, like those of the past, use an ID
system to control the people. Furthermore, the technology used in
creating such a card, considered the ultimate human tracking device,
poses a grave threat to our privacy rights, enabling government
agents to access our most personal information and track our
moment-by-moment movements - even in our homes. Such a card would
necessarily include biometric information such as fingerprint or
retina print or DNA data, along with personal information such as
race, age, and residential status.

For
such a card to be effective, police authority will necessarily be
expanded so that law-enforcement agents can demand the card in a wide
range of circumstances. Also, a greater sharing of information among
all government agencies will be established through a national
database.

In
addition to pushing the constitutional limits of privacy, a
government-maintained, national information database immediately
gives rise to worries about the misuse of information and abuse by
those with access to databases - which includes private
corporations as well as identity thieves.

Voter
fraud is clearly the least of our concerns right now, and voter-ID
laws appear to be nothing more than a back-door attempt to institute
a national ID card. Let us hope that we don't wake up one morning
to find ourselves living in a police state.

Constitutional
attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
).
Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at
(http://www.rutherford.org).